I've been dosing vodka for a month or more. I have a 65 G tank with 15G sump,40lbs of LR, I estimate my water volume to be around 70-75 Gallons. I'm running GAC and GFO. I do not have a refugium. I run a over sized skimmer rated for up to 160 gallons (swc cone 160) My nitrates have been at 20ppm and has not dropped once during my vodka dosing time. It has climbed a bit but not much. I am now at 3ML daily, am I doing something wrong?
Vodka dosing going no where??
- Thread starter mike810
- Start date
Maybe the nitrate value is not accurate.
Has anything apparently changed in the tank?
Has anything apparently changed in the tank?
In my opinion you can probably keep ramping up slowly to abut 5ml. It can take months for nitrate reductions to show up in some tanks. 20ppm NO3 is not an urgent issue. Some say sugar goes faster. Beware, it may but in my experience some corals like scolymia and lobophylia don't do well with it.
Haven't seen any changes. Nitrate staying steady at 20ppm. Noticed a diatom bloom but that's probably cause I ran out of gfo for 2 weeks
Then it is probably OK to up the dose a bit. 
Systems are different so it's hard to make a specific recommendation as one size fits all. FWIW I've been dosing what amounts to .065ml (90 proof vodka)per gallon to a 550 gallon system with a relatively high biolaod for about 17months without any discernible ill effects. NO3 holds at between 0.2ppm and 0.5ppm. That would be .065 x 70 or about 5ml for 70 gallons. Others dose more. Some dose less.
i just skimmed thru the post but if your dosing vodka you need to be replacing your bacteria that the vodka is getting rid of. MB7 is a great product to use. That the reason your nitrate isnt coming down. I have heard you can cause a system crash if you dont replace the bacteria with vodka dosing.
UnknownFish
New member
Not to hijack this thread but what might be MB7?
UnknownFish
New member
Never mind it's late and I'm not thinking, microbacter 7, I wasnt thinking.
HighlandReefer
Team RC
Dosing bacteria may help, but it is more likely that other bacteria naturally present in your system will be the dominate bacteria responsible for braking down the excess wastes in your system. A reef tank contains many 10's of thousands of different kinds of bacteria, IMHO. The likely hood that a few species added to a system out-competes the others is very low. This has been demonstrated in many research articles I have read when using known bacteria in a reactor to reduce nitrates. Now if one were to artificially manufacturer a bacteria, this may change (super bacteria). Super bacteria are what are being researched with now in waste water management. I don't believe that any of the bacteria sold currently are super manufactured bacteria at present, due to the extreme costs in making them.
I do not dose bacteria of any kind, and I dose organic carbon. So it is not a must. Some may think it useful, and perhaps in some situations it is. But I've not felt any need or potential benefit in my system.
